Romans 12:15

The past few weeks have been very busy.  They have also been cold.  There is still snow on the ground… it may be a white Easter for me.  I’ve been working more and more on English Camp, sending out flyers and trying to recruit staff and campers, as well as all of the normal programs that we have here.  I have also started tutoring two students in English, which I have found is much tougher than one might think.  I never was very good with grammar.  I never could remember what was an adverb or subject predicate or whatever all that is; I always read a lot and was always able to just guess the correct answer because I knew it sounded correct.  I can tell the students what is correct with their English, but I can’t tell them why every time, or the rules to follow.  Hopefully just speaking it a little more and me helping them where I can will be some help to them at least.  The past two weeks have been especially busy.  I had a seminar I had to go to last week and this past week we had a retreat with our kids that was from Sunday until Thursday.  The seminar was actually a nice break from work and the house we stayed at had a lot of really neat things to do during my spare time.  I was able to take a camera around the city and take random photographs and then got to develop them myself in black and white.  It was really cool to see and learn how to do that.  If it wasn’t so expensive it would really be a fun hobby to have a room set up for that at home.  The only bad part of the seminar was the time we had to be in class which was from morning until afternoon.  The seminar topic was politics and communication in our daily lives.  It had a lot of potential to be very interesting, but the teacher just was not very good.  I think that he usually does seminars for an older age group, although even then I can’t really see how his methods would be interesting to anyone.  I’ll give him credit because it was clear that he tried, he asked us several times what we wanted to learn about and what we wanted to do, but there weren’t many options and the few times I did answer it ended up being something he didn’t really know about so he kind of brushed it aside.  I got the feeling that he was hoping we would respond with the topics he knew about and which he ended up teaching about anyways. 

The children’s retreat was really a full week.  I got back from the seminar on Friday, had a day to do laundry, and then we left on Sunday for the retreat.  It had a little bit of everything.  We got to do a lot of fun activities with the kids.  Each morning we had a little play about the two men on the way to Emmaus.  The first day they were sad their friend had been killed, the second day they met a stranger on the road and had lots of questions about why God would let Jesus be killed, the third day they realized it was Jesus they had met and were filled with joy, and the last day they shared their joy with all of the other disciples and prepared to tell the world.   After the play we broke up into groups and went into the play a little deeper and after that we had different crafts or detective games because in the play a detective was trying to find out the truth about the Jesus people.  In the afternoons we also had different activities.  One day we went swimming and played in a gym and then did mountain climbing on a wall, the next day we visited a clinic for people trying to recover from alcohol and drug addictions, and the last day we went to a planetarium and saw a film about the different seasons of the year.  It was all really good.  I had to learn how to be the guy that is underneath and holds the rope when the kids were climbing which is a cool skill to have. The planetarium was a lot of fun.  It was basically just like seeing an IMAX film in 3D.  The clinic was hard.  We got a little tour of the place and also sat together with one of the guys who works there and he led a discussion about drugs and alcohol and let the kids ask whatever questions they wanted to.  The kids had a lot of questions and it was clear that 90% of them know about what happens to a person from personal experiences.  Some of them asked what you could do as a kid to get your parents help.  Each night we had a different program as well, and the night of the clinic visit was very powerful.  We laid out candles in the shape of a cross and let each person light a candle and say a prayer for themselves and their families.  The kids could also say something about their families or what to pray about specifically.  By the end of the time 90% of the kids were crying.  They were also comforting each other.  So many talked about missing their mom or dad or siblings that had been taken away to foster homes.  Some just cried and didn’t say anything, although I know several of their parents are drug or alcohol addicts from what they have told me at other times.  I ended up crying too because it was so heartbreaking to see so many loving kids crying and to know what they have to live with at home and all the time.  I stole one of Bighouse’s mottos and told them that our parents here on Earth are not perfect and they have lots of problems themselves but we have a Father in Heaven that loves us perfectly.  I just wanted them to know that they can go to God and be comforted and’ that He loves them so much.   The next morning one of the kids prayed before our breakfast and said “Thank you God that we could come to you last night and that you washed away our tears”.  He told me later it was good for him because he doesn’t usually have a place where he can just cry like that.  I understood a little better the verse in the Bible that says to weep with those that weep.  That was really all that I was doing.  I find it so hard to put myself in these kids’ shoes.  I can’t understand or imagine what it must be like to grow up with parents that don’t care or care more about drugs or alcohol than you.  It is hard for me to know how they see God as well.  I have found myself wondering what kind of comfort would it be to hear that God loves me and wants me to be his and will comfort me and take away my worries if I lived so alone without parents.  But I cried with them because I wanted to share their pain and sadness they have to experience.  And I think the kids realized that I really care about them.  I think that is why the Bible says to weep with those who weep.  Afterwards I felt like the kids talked with me and treated me much differently than before, I think they trust me.  It was a powerful night.  The next morning I kept thinking of the verse that says there is mourning in the night, but joy comes with the morning.  I think the kids did really enjoy that next day when we went to the planetarium and as the one boy prayed I think they did feel better the next morning, but I kept thinking that as much as I wished that it was the solution to their problems, these kids still had to go back to their normal lives on Thursday afternoon.  So many of the kids did not want to leave, and one or two were very sad about having to leave.  We invited all of the kids to come and bring their families on Sunday to an Easter service for children and adults so hopefully we will be able to reach out to at least a few of the parents then and show them God’s love as well.